


Labyrinth

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [19]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Battle of Titan (Marvel), Battle of Wakanda (Avengers: Infinity War), Brain Damage, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Descriptions of Surgery, F/M, Gen, Major Character Injury, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Presumed Dead, Reports of Canonical Character Deaths, Seizures, Unplanned Pregnancy, please stand by, wtf is going on?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29759640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: Thanos never got all six Stones. Half the universe never got snapped. And Tony Stark didn't come home from Titan. A lot of things are very different as a result.The first three chapters fill squares on my Round 4 Tony Stark Bingo card number 4028. (required info collected below in each chapter's notes)Rated teen for a few cuss words and general comic book violence.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009245
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bingo Specifics for chapter 1--
> 
> Title: Labyrinth, chapter 1  
> Author: deehellcat  
> Card Number: 4028  
> Link (AO3, Tumblr, etc.) https://archiveofourown.org/works/29759640  
> Square Filled (Letter AND number AND prompt) T1, last times/farewells  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Pepperony  
> Rating (Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit) teen for a few cuss words and general comic book violence  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: Canon Divergence—Infinity War, Battle of Wakanda, Battle of Titan, Unplanned Pregnancy, Other Tags to be Added Later  
> Summary: Thanos never got all six Stones. Half the universe never got snapped. And Tony Stark never made it home from Titan. A lot of things are very different as a result.  
> Word Count: 2139

_We don’t stand a chance_ , Rhodey thought in despair, as hordes of aliens flooded the flatlands of Wakanda. The Black Panther led his people, and the Avengers, more or less reunited, and their handful of allies stood with them. It was the invasion Tony had always dreaded, always warned about, always worked his ass off to be ready for; and now they were here, dammit, and Tony wasn’t. War Machine swooped and strafed and blasted every bastard he could get close enough to, but it was not going to be enough. Thor appeared in a fucking blast crater in the middle of the battle, with a raccoon with a blaster, and a freaking Ent or something, and the tide started to turn.

Then the wind began to rise, and a ring of fire appeared in the air. A collective gasp sounded over the comms, and the retreating remnants of the attack force halted as if awaiting their leader. “Bruce,” Rogers said urgently, “is that him? Is it Thanos?” 

Banner’s tone was more puzzled than foreboding. “Not sure, Cap.” The circle of flame expanded and turned on edge like a hatchway, its bottom lip resting on the torn-up African soil. Beyond the impossible opening in the sky, Rhodey spied a bleak, wrecked hellscape. “This looks more like…”

He was cut short when a human figure in a big red cloak stepped through the gap. A pace behind him came an odd-looking group of humanoids, clearly braced for battle. Everybody stopped and looked at everybody else. The very earth seemed to hold its breath, and Rhodey suddenly remembered the report Bruce had given on the quinjet ride here. This had to be Strange, the wizard, and the green necklace he wore was the Infinity Stone he guarded, the one Thanos’ goons had kidnapped him to get. The big purple freak Banner had described was nowhere to be seen though, but inside his helmet Rhodey grinned. He was so going to roast Tony for the drama queen he was, when he came roaring through that hole in a second with word of victory.

He waited. And waited. And one more figure did come through the portal; but it wasn’t Tony. It was Spider-Man, carrying a round parcel wrapped in his webbing. He flung it like a hammer throw at a school track meet, to land with a wet thud amid the milling throng of invaders. The wrap fell away to reveal a big bald purple head, its mouth half open as if in surprise, its eyes bulging and sightless. Over War Machine’s comms, Peter Parker’s young voice sounded choked and grim. “Activate Instant Kill.”

He did, and the defenders of Earth did. The troops of the genocidal alien warlord collapsed in panic at the sight of their leader’s remains, and were mopped up quickly. In the Hulkbuster armor, Bruce tromped through the magical doorway, returned with the lifeless body that matched the head, and pulled a brass glove brilliant with several colored stones from one limp hand. Impatient and ready to give his pal grief, Rhodey landed next to Parker, who had taken out scores of enemy forces and was flailing around as if looking for something else to attack. “Whoa, whoa, hey buddy, calm down,” Rhodey said. “Where’s—”

“Colonel Rhodes!” Peter gasped and launched at him. The sensors on the armor read off the death grip the kid had on it, and the shaking of his thin body, and as Rhodey's adrenalin ebbed, a sick foreboding replaced it. “He’s—Mr. Stark, he—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—“

Numb with shock, Rhodey gathered him in. The numbness remained, as the Wakandans cleared their ground and the Avengers and allies gathered to get the full story. “Iron Man and Spider-Man freed me from my abductors,” Strange explained. “We took over their ship, but rather than return to Earth, Stark felt we should take the fight to Thanos. We continued on the original flight path to his ruined homeworld, and met this crew.”

“The Guardians of the Galaxy,” the most human of that bunch, who went by Star-Lord, helpfully added. “We had our own reasons for going after Thanos’ ass, but when we met up with the wizard here and his pals we figured it was best to join forces. We all jumped him, which gave Mantis—” he gestured toward a small female, the antennae on her head bobbing as she nodded—“a chance to use her mental whammy on him.”

“He was strong,” she said, “even with all their distractions. He threw us all off, but your friend, the Iron Man, recovered and attacked him again.”

“Thanos brought him down,” rumbled a big male with dark red tattoos covering his skin. “’You are a worthy foe, Stark,’ he yelled at him, ‘but I will not let you stand in my way. I hope your people remember you’. He held up the Stones on his hand, and went to slay his foe with them.”

Strange continued, “I tried to use the Time Stone to shift a few seconds, so his stroke would miss. I…” For the first time, his self-possession faltered. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was a hair too slow, or four Stones easily overwhelmed one.”

“The forces collided,” a thin figure who looked half blue-skinned female, half cyborg, interrupted. “Directly above Stark. I saw it.” She touched her temple, beside an eye that appeared prosthetic. “He vanished, armor and all. I suspect he was instantly vaporized.” Peter sat on the ground, still wearing his mask, but when his shoulders jerked, her brusque tone softened just a bit. “If it is any consolation to his comrades in arms, he surely did not suffer.” _No_ , Rhodey thought bleakly, _not a damn bit of consolation._

To his credit, Strange only glared for a moment at her, before he finished, “Whatever happened, the clash seemed to drain Thanos, momentarily, and the spiderling here went off. We all launched another frontal assault, but he started winding those web-strands around Thanos’ neck, then attached it to a broken piece of a propeller, I think? Some bit of the planet's destroyed tech. Either way, he set it turning and—” He held up a fist and flipped his thumb sharply upward. “Popped the Titan’s head right off.” His hand dropped to awkwardly pat Parker’s arm. “Good thinking. Stark would be proud.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” The young hero’s voice was dull. It sounded like Rhodey felt. 

The Avengers looked around at each other, stunned and uneasy. Natasha gestured toward the gauntlet Bruce still guarded. “About those—what do you suggest?”

“We have a safe place to secrete them here,” T’Challa said, “though only for a short while. I have put my country in enough peril as it is; I will not redouble it. Decisions must be made about their disposition.”

“Right. We will.” Steve swallowed, then looked around the circle at the heroes who had been in exile with him. “And with-without Tony, earth’s more vulnerable than ever. We can’t continue to hide out.”

Rhodey was no more happy with the rogues than he had been when they had turned up at the compound, but he had accepted them back for the greater good, and that was still job one. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, his voice sounding odd to his ears. “You won’t be welcomed with open arms, understand. There’s got to be some compromise.” He stepped back into his suit. God, Tony was never again going to hook some weird-ass mod up to it just to be a little shit, and Rhodey fought to keep from breaking down, at least until the helmet hid his face. “We’ll talk later. Right now, I have to go…go talk to Pepper, give her the news. And _you_ ,” he poked Peter, “probably have an aunt losing her damn mind.”

“I need to see Miss Potts too,” Peter muttered. “To tell her h-how sorry I am.”

To his surprise, Strange said, “I’m heading back to New York too. I can portal us all, and I rather feel I should go with you. I’m the one who dragged Stark away from her to begin with.”

“Um, yeah,” the Star-Lord guy put in. “I’m not big on condolences, but one of us ought to go too, just to tell his lady he, ah, died a hero, you know.”

 _Died a hero. Fuck, Pep always said it’d end up this way,_ Rhodey thought as the sorcerer cut a hole in the air and ushered them all through, into an ornate foyer, and then after Rhodey made a quick call, from there to the townhouse in Lenox Hill Tony had bought after selling the tower.

Telling her was not easy, especially when Rhodey had barely accepted it himself. True to form, though, she was calm, almost stoic. She even managed a laugh when Star-Lord, who admitted he was actually Peter Quill from Missouri, stumbled over his attempts to offer sympathy. “I didn’t know him long, but he was kind of a jerk. Aw damn, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay. Tony could be, sometimes,” she smiled through her tears. He handed her a small gadget, said it was a ‘transdimensional beacon’, and that she could use it if she ever had an emergency and needed the Guardians’ help. With bemused thanks, she took it.

Parker was beside himself. Pep ended up consoling _him_ , before she ordered him to call his aunt. Strange sent Quill back to Wakanda to collect his crew, but paused before he followed to send them back across the galaxy. “Miss Potts. I used the Time Stone to scan numerous timelines, to determine our best course. I didn’t have opportunity to look into them all, or even most, but several million at least. For what it’s worth, I saw that Stark loved you, deeply, in all of them.”

She nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly. The sorcerer left, after also leaving her a gizmo to call him if need arose. “Don’t you have a damn cell phone?” she said, clearly trying to joke. 

As the portal closed, she turned to Rhodey and he pulled her into his arms. “Pep, fuck it, I…”

He floundered for words. “Sh,” she said. “We all knew one of these days Tony was going out to save somebody and not come back. I told Peter and I’ll tell you, it wasn’t your fault, or his, or anyone’s other than that dead lunatic.”

“I wish I could’ve at least brought him home to you. It’s—okay, you know, for you to let it out. You don’t have to be strong for everybody else, even though I know that’s kind of your thing.”

“I’ll hold on until Peter is heading safely home. It’s bad enough what he’s been through, he doesn’t need to see or hear anything else to make him blame himself more. I know the signs too well. He’s… rather like Tony, in that.”

“Miss Potts?” Peter stepped hesitantly back into the living room. “May’s with a patient. I left a message though, so she’ll know. I can take the train home, the Lexington Avenue station’s right down there at the end of your block—”

“Oh no." Pepper shook her head. "No, you will not. Tony worked hard to protect you, so the least I can do to—to honor him is to do the same. I’ll get Happy to drive you.”

Peter started to argue, until the phone in his hand buzzed. “There’s May,” he said and stepped back into the next room while he answered.

Pepper texted Happy quickly, then sighed, and dropped her arm, still holding the phone, as though the slight weight of it was suddenly too much. “I called Tony,” she said faintly. “He was on that spaceship. I argued with him. I yelled at him. If I’d just stopped to think it might be the last words he heard from me…I would have said something different.” Rhodey rubbed her back. “He was right,” she suddenly went on. “The last actual conversation we had, just before Strange and Bruce showed up? He said he—he dreamed we had a child. He was so excited at the thought, and I had to tell him it wasn’t happening. But he was right.” Rhodey froze. “On the way back here from the park, I stopped at the drugstore and bought a pregnancy test, just…just because. And I don’t know how he knew, but he was right, Rhodey. I’m pregnant. That should have been what I said, and maybe he would’ve turned that spaceship around.” Her small laugh this time was bitter. “Who am I kidding. He wouldn’t have. You know that better than anybody else. But at least…at least he would have known.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my friends and fellow ficsters who have heard me threaten 'the story that starts with Tony dying on Titan', yep, at long last, this is it. Prepare for angst and some confusion. I will say that right up front. It's going to, hopefully, be a bit like the first few episodes of WandaVision, in that there are several possibilities for wtf is going on as we move forward, and somewhere around chapter 5 or 6, the picture will become clear.
> 
> Also, if anybody is interested, here's my vision of Tony and Pepper's townhouse. (basement workshop not shown. hehe) https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/175-E-64th-St-New-York-NY-10065/31534865_zpid/


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our scene changes, and someone gets told what went on while he was sleeping.
> 
> Fills the "backstory" square on my Round 4 Tony Stark Bingo card number 4028. (required info collected below)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bingo specifics for this chapter--  
> Title: Labyrinth, chapter 2  
> Author: deehellcat  
> Card Number: 4028  
> Link (AO3, Tumblr, etc.) https://archiveofourown.org/works/29759640/chapters/73443777  
> Square Filled (Letter AND number AND prompt) T2, backstory  
> Ship/Main Pairing: gen, for this chapter  
> Rating (Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit) teen for a few cuss words  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: Major Character Injury, Amnesia, Brain Damage, Descriptions of Surgery, Seizures, wtf is going on?, Please Stand By, Reports of Canonical Character Deaths  
> Summary: Our scene changes, and someone gets told what went on while he was sleeping.  
> Word Count: 3691

The first thing he was aware of was cool and oddly clean air flowing up his nose, immediately followed by the faint sting of irritation in the same place. He blinked his eyes open with an effort; they felt stuck closed, dry and grainy, and the right one hurt when he tried to move it. The ceiling above him was blurry, but after a few more blinks the blobs overhead resolved into blandly tan acoustic tiles. A facility of some kind, then; and as he woke more, he identified the sensations in the middle of his face as a cannula streaming oxygen into his nostrils. He went to reach up to investigate further, but his hands wouldn’t move.

At his faint grunt of frustration, there was movement nearby. A moment later, a woman in medical scrubs appeared in his field of vision. “Well, hello there,” she said, her calm Scandinavian accent contrasting with the sharp way she scrutinized him. “Nice of you to grace us with your presence. Can you tell me your name?”

It took a moment to grab hold of the right words, and then to give them voice. “Stark.” Damn, his voice creaked like trying to open the door of an old car that had sat in a barn for decades. “Tony…Tony Stark.”

“Excellent,” she smiled. “Got some brain cells working again there, I see.”

“That’s…been debated hotly in certain quarters.” Honestly, he wasn’t quite sure how much grey matter was functional; his head throbbed worse than his first teenage hangover, his vision kept fuzzing in and out, and he couldn’t smell a thing, not even the usual weird rubbery smell of the prongs up his nose. Even his face felt weird, cold and itchy.

Apparently enough of the Stark charm got through his cottonmouth to register, though, because the nurse, doctor, whoever, fairly beamed. “Let’s give them a little exercise, then. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He paused and took a good sniff of O2 in hopes of clearing the smog choking his thoughts a bit. This was a hospital, and they knew who he was, those were good data points to have. “I…was on another planet. Not unusual, being Iron Man. A—a being called Thanos, sent his goons to kidnap a local wizard, get a magic stone he wore. He wanted—wanted to collect ‘em all, six of ‘em, use ‘em to take out half the universe. His idea of conservation. I went after the wizard, sprung him…we decided to beard the big purple bastard in his lair. Ran into some aliens, called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy—he was on their shit list too, so, enemy of my enemy and all that. We almost had him, but he fought loose—I went at him again, he was going to use the stones he had on me. Which, apparently he didn’t, since unless this is somebody's really weird idea of an afterlife, I’m still alive…?”

The medic listened and asked a few questions. Tony told her everything he could think of: nearly everything, that is, except the things he obviously left out, like Spider-Man’s identity. Her eyebrows drew together when he stopped. “That’s where your memory drops out? When—Thanos—threatened your life?” He nodded, then regretted it when his head began to pound anew. “Okay, enough for now,” she added when he could not bite back a small moan. “We don’t want to let that pain get ahead of us again, and you clearly have a lot more recovering to do. I’m punching your pain pump up. You rest, and we’ll talk later.”

“Wait,” Tony started, then half-growled when he couldn’t reach toward her. Looking down his body, he made out that his hands and arms were strapped down and bristling with IVs. “What—how long have I been out? I need to see my—where’s Pepper, and—”

She shushed him and fiddled with gear beside the bed. Within seconds the fog in his brain thickened, and he could only go with the drugs, helpless, back into sleep.

When consciousness returned, the view over his head had not changed, nor had his situation. The pain in his head was a dull roar, and he had thought through dull roars so much in his life, it was practically his baseline. Restrained as he was though—and whose fucking idea was that, he was going to buy this hospital and fire everybody involved—he couldn’t even reach a call button. Instead, he said to the ceiling tiles, “Um, hello, anybody home?”

A rustle and a small gasp next to his bed replied, followed by a face leaning toward him. This time it was a man, casually dressed, tucking a phone into his shirt pocket as he stood from a chair. “Hey,” he offered hesitantly. “Good to see you awake. The medical staff said to ask if you know your name, first.”

“I know my name,” Tony groaned. “And…” He frowned in thought and strove to focus on the man. His face was pleasant enough, fair with a darkish beard and intense eyes. “I think…I know yours.” 

The eyes widened a touch and the man nodded with an air of expectancy. “We used to joke that nobody knew if you didn’t remember names, pretended you didn’t, or just didn’t give a damn.”

Tony winced, and it came to him then. “Beck,” he said. “Quentin Beck.”

A big grin spread across the other man’s face. “Guilty as charged,” he said. “Last person on the planet, or on any of several others to hear your account, you expected to find keeping vigil at your bedside, I’m sure.”

“Damn right about that. A sharp but less than stable guy I fired years ago wouldn’t have been my ideal nurse.”

“Yeah, well,” Beck shook his head with a wry little twist of his mouth, “funny how tables turn, huh? Things change. I got in therapy, got my head on straight, put my own crew together and started getting some decent gigs.”

Tony shifted in the bed, as much as he could anyway. “Glad to know that, but this isn’t exactly the optimum setting for a reunion. And, nothing personal, but you aren’t nearly as appealing to look at as one Miss Potts, who’s probably ready to cream me for nearly getting myself killed yet again, so if you could—” He knew by the way Beck’s face shut down that something was very wrong. “What the fuck is going on? How long have I been here? Where’s—" he tried to yell, then gasped as a railroad spike of pain hammered into his head. 

“Stark—Tony—c’mon, calm down, please. We’ve put too much effort into getting your various parts reassembled and running, more or less.” Beck clasped his now shaking shoulders. “Truth of the matter is, judging from what you told your nurse, you’ve lost a hell of a lot of the plot—sorry, not trying to be funny here, it’s just—” He took a deep breath, and his face went unnervingly grave. “This Thanos character got what he wanted, and wiped out half the population. Your Miss Potts is gone. Far as we can tell, every other one of the Avengers is too. It’s been nearly two years since the last events you say you remember, and you’ve been in a coma for the last six months.

“You weren’t heard from for several weeks after it happened, and people assumed you’d been killed too, but then you turned up with a rough bunch, not quite human-looking. The public, what was left of them, didn’t have anybody really to turn their anger on, so you were a convenient target. Rumors flew you were behind the losses, had allied with aliens against Earth, anything the wingnut media could concoct to feed the beast. You went underground, nobody saw you or heard from you for months. Then—my business had kicked into high gear since the Decimation; I got lucky, didn’t lose many of my people. A crew of mine was working a job in a remote spot in Idaho, and found you unconscious, barely alive. This vessel appeared out of nowhere in the air, scared my poor techs shitless, needless to say. It was those Guardians you mentioned. They said they had been working with you to track Thanos down, and once you did, they went after him with you. You got hold of these stones, tried to reverse the killings, but apparently it was too much for you. They imploded, took out a good chunk of whatever planet you were all on, and—bear with me, I know it sounds crazy, but then, crazy is your game, right?” Tony stilled, and stared, hearing but not wholly processing what he heard. “Stark? Tony? You with me, pal?”

He gave a jerky nod, a very small one to keep from triggering new pain. “Go on,” he got out.

“Their idea was, the implosion of the stones may have ripped a gap in the space-time continuum. May have thrown you down at some random spot, or, who knows, with the kind of power you described those rocks have, maybe they read your mind and sent you back to your home planet? Anyway, your buddies followed you through the gap and told my team what happened, before they took off. I still have some connections, so I was able to get you back here on the QT and round up quality medical care.”

“Where’s…here?”

“Oh. ‘Here’ is the European HQ of Quentin Beck Enterprises. A little farther to take you, but the EU, or what’s left of it, being more compact, I figured it was easier to get good docs in to care for you while keeping you out of the public eye. And you needed a lot of care. Your head was full of shrapnel—they went in through your eye socket in hopes of not having to open your head up, so if one eye’s still wonky that’s why. Ended up having to open your skull anyhow though, when your brain started swelling, to keep it from further injuring itself.” One hand left Tony’s shoulder to touch his restrained arm. “Now that you’re coming around, we’ll get you cleared to undo these things—couldn’t risk you clawing at your wounds and the incisions. Although,” a shadow passed over his face, “you were having seizures pretty often too, so it may depend on whether the med team thinks they’ve got those under control. Don't ask me, I'm no MD, but the brain damage obviously caused a significant period of missing time, if you don’t remember the Decimation, or the time immediately after.

“Besides your noggin, you had a shit-ton of other issues. Broken ribs, flash burns, fractured vertebrae—the team was afraid those had damaged your spine to the point you wouldn’t be able to walk, but that at least seems not to have happened. We’ve had a tech working your limbs regularly, and you’ll need physical therapy to get your strength back, especially after the bout of pneumonia a couple of months ago, but they’re pretty sure you’ll be up and around eventually.”

Questions welled up in Tony’s throat, like tears unshed, like an explosion stifled. “But—I don’t—what about SI, and SHIELD, and—everybody?” It couldn’t be everybody, not and leave him the way he had seen in Wanda Maximoff’s vision, the way he had always dreaded. _All dead. All? Peter, Bruce…Rhodey…Pep, oh fuck Pep…All dead because of me, because I didn’t do all I could, and that wasn’t even the worst part..._ Beck stepped back, and Tony lunged forward as far as the straps allowed, unable to grab the other man and shake answers out of him. The next instant, the words cut off as though he was being choked, and his body spasmed and lurched backward, suddenly and completely out of his control. A high thin scream sounded, so alien it took precious seconds for Tony to realize it was coming from him.

Beck swore and slapped a button on the wall. A man in medical garb stormed in with a syringe in hand and injected it into one of the ports in Tony’s arm. “Whew, thanks,” Beck panted, eyes wide. “Fuck, that’s scary. Not as scary as living it, I’m sure.” He caught his breath and put his hand on Tony’s shoulder again as the convulsions began to ease. “My fault, I dumped too much on you too fast. I just thought, you know, rip the bandaid off. Back when I worked for you, you could always process so much…I’m sorry to have triggered that, they told me too much stress could send you into a seizure. I’ll shut up now, you need to rest.”

“No,” Tony managed, despite feeling like he had gone ten rounds with the Hulk. “Please…tell me…”

Beck sighed. “I don't know anything about a shield. if you mean Captain America, he's...gone, with the rest of them. You sold Stark Industries; the deal was finalized a few weeks before my people found you. I check on it now and then. It’s doing all right, though they changed the name.” Of course they did, Tony thought wearily; who wanted their business to be associated with the guy who was responsible for half the world dying? Of all the names he’d been given, Merchant of Death was the one he had finally lived up to. “I’ve always suspected you never intended to come back alive, that you meant to find Thanos, and fix things or die trying.”

He had to say, Beck had him pegged. He wouldn't have come back. What reason would there have been to? “And of course, I didn’t succeed at either one,” Tony mumbled, the medication pushing him toward sleep also tearing through what flimsy filters he had maintained.

“If it helps any, the implosion destroyed those stones, apparently, and killed Thanos, so nobody'll try to pull his trick ever again. You lived up to your team name, in the end, and avenged everybody he took down. None of this is your fault, no matter what the press says; but since they insist on saying it, I’d like if you’d stay here to recover.” 

Beck’s voice was sympathetic, and that abruptly made no sense to Tony’s reeling brain. “Why? Why the hell do you care?”

“Why?” Beck repeated. “Well, one very important thing I learned from therapy was, everybody has to own their shit. We’re all set up for you, it’s safe from the haters, and maybe, if—scratch that, when—you recover enough, we could work together again, for real this time. The world needs all the help it can get, now, and perhaps we can give it some.”

A part of Tony wanted to argue, but really, there was nothing to argue from. He was physically wrecked, and when he fully sorted out what he had been told, _distraught_ was probably going to be a mild descriptor of his mental state. “Yeah…yeah, okay.” He should be grateful somebody was willing to help him, even if it was out of pity or self-interest or whatever. “You’re not gonna, um, leak that I’m here?”

“Course not. That’d defeat my whole purpose in bringing you here,” Beck said with unusual gentleness, as if he knew Tony was hiding in shame from his failures. “Petty grievances aside, we made a decent team, and an argument over what to call a computer program is far from being sufficient cause to throw you to the wolves. Although I still maintain BARF sucked as a name.”

Tony let out a small bitter laugh, and just did keep it from morphing into a sob. “Agreed…” he conceded, and let himself fade into the now welcome embrace of unconsciousness.

In the days that followed, Tony set himself the task of restarting some semblance of life. His legs felt like spaghetti noodles, and it took a while for him to progress to getting around with a walker. Physical therapy was hell; but he thought of that same hell Rhodey had been through, after the Avengers’ little civil war he had been caught up in because of Tony, and drove himself harder. The therapists, and all the staff Beck had tagged to work with him, were good to him, better than he deserved. The treatments and grafts he had received while comatose had left him with surprisingly little scarring from the burns he had suffered.

His brain, as expected, was the hardest nut to crack. His caregivers forced him to take things far slower than he wanted, at first, and after overexertion had triggered a few horrific seizures, he had obliged himself to downshift. Try though he might, he could not retrieve any memories of the months after Thanos’ fatal snap, no recall of selling his old man’s company or working with Quill and his merry band or a final desperate attempt to mend what he had allowed to be broken beyond repair.

Then there were the little changes. The loss of smell was mildly infuriating. Looking into a mirror for the first time, seeing himself clean-shaven and with a patchy buzz-cut, was more upsetting than it should have been; but then, everyone had always told him he was an egomaniac. When he asked, Beck actually looked embarrassed. “They had to shave your head the first time they opened your skull, and a couple more times after that, always just about the time you’d get something more than stubble up there. As far as your signature facial fur goes…we never gave up hope you’d wake up, but keeping that fussy goatee neat was a low priority, so we just shaved it. Figured you could take care of it yourself when the time came, and you’d rather wake up to this than a mountain-man beard.” It explained the itchy cold feeling he remembered from his first waking, since he wasn’t sure he had seen his jaw since sometime in the late nineties.

Intentions to take care of his own grooming were stymied by a weak and shaky right arm. Beck was constantly reassuring, which still felt bizarre but was a weird comfort. “Even if you can’t physically manipulate things, we can still work together. You can talk me through stuff, and I can do the grunt work. I’m not above that now,” he added, with a hint of self-deprecating humor that Tony responded to.

They talked a lot, actually. Beck shared some ideas he had had to improve on the holographic tech he had helped with, and Tony returned the favor. At times it was achingly reminiscent of working with Peter at the compound (he asked what had happened to it, and Beck promised to check). He asked, too, about Spider-Man, and got a certain painful satisfaction when he learned Beck had already counted him as part of that mental set ‘Avengers who Thanos eliminated’. It had meant so much to the kid, that exchange on the Black Order’s q-ship. Peter had died an Avenger, a hero, and the world should know that; but too, Peter wanted so much to keep his privacy and his identity secret. In the end, Tony said nothing. It was more an honor to Parker’s memory, he concluded, to keep that in his heart. 

It destroyed him to know that everybody who meant anything to him was gone, enough so that at times he wanted to give up too. At those times, he thought of the strength they had shown, especially Pepper, how fucking courageous she had been, and found it in himself to carry on. She never gave up, so he had no right to be a coward. Looking up some other people was another goal of his; he didn’t want to risk exposing Spider-Man, for example, by asking if some random nurse in Queens had been snapped, and his mental processes were still too blurred and disjointed to keep up with a valid cover story, just yet.

The seizures were probably the worst, though on various days something else might briefly take that top slot on the list of Reasons Tony Stark’s Life Sucks Ass. The medical staff hadn’t quite deemed them intractable yet, and that was one small birthday candle’s worth of hope. The succession of medications they kept trying in hopes of reining the abnormal brain activity in was nearly as blurring to his ability to think as the seizures themselves. Too, there were the falls, when a seizure hit without warning, bouncing his already precarious skull off the floor of the small neat living quarters, necessitating someone to come in and get him into bed. They also had to mop up where he had generally peed on himself, and put up with the bouts of sobbing that often went along with the whole shitshow—emotional lability, it was called. Humiliating, but the helpers were patient and tolerant, and his guard eased up around them after a while; he started to let them help.

When a cocktail of meds was found that made him feel slightly loopy but seemed to hold the worst of the fits at bay, Tony got antsy. He had offered to pay Beck for his care, but been told that no trace of any funds in his name could be found. Beck admitted, “I figured you put every cent from the sale of SI into looking for Thanos.” Which, no lie, did sound like something Tony would have done; and if he had put any leftovers into an account, it likely would have been under another name to avoid the near-constant public and media harassment Beck described. The problem there, of course, was that Tony hadn’t been able to remember his own fucking social security number (without Pepper, and he almost burst into tears again just thinking how she had gently razzed him about it), let alone access codes for bank accounts he couldn’t find. “Don’t stress about it, Tony,” Beck assured him. “I’ve got some things in the pipeline. Once we’re sure you can use some tech without sending yourself into status epilepticus, you can help me out with those, if you insist on earning your keep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (points to tags) WTF is going on? Please stand by. (runs)
> 
> Ok, seriously, theories about wtf is going on are welcome. Please share in the comments if you like. lol


End file.
